Search Results for 'Malachy Burke'

On this day, October 23, 1928, Coláiste Éinde (St Enda’s College) opened in an old house belonging to the Blake family in Furbo. It had been founded by the State shortly after the State itself was founded. The aim of the college was to teach boys through the medium of Irish so that they could go on to third level at St Patrick’s Training College, get a secure job as an Irish language teacher and then, in turn, educate a new generation of boys as Gaeilge. The college did not last very long in Furbo as there was some kind of domestic dispute between members of the Blake family and the school had to be evacuated by Christmas 1930, so they moved it to Dublin, to Talbot House on Talbot Street.

On this day 70 years ago, June 1 1953, Scoil Íde opened for the first time. In 1952, the Sisters of Jesus and Mary purchased Allen’s Hotel on Dalysfort Road which had been run by John and Angela Allen. It had at one time been known as Daly’s Fort House, a high-class hotel run by a Mrs Galbraith. She sold it to a Mr Miller of Persse’s Distillers who used it as a private house and he sold it on to the Allens. Many will remember it as the place where Bruce Woodcock, the English Heavyweight champion, trained for his famous fight with Máirtín Thornton.

The area we know as Devon Park in Salthill was originally part of the Lenaboy estate which belonged to the O’Hara family, who were based in Lenaboy Castle. The entire left hand side of our aerial photograph (c1940) was part of the estate, originally a green field site, the outer wall of which ran along the main Salthill Road. Bertie Simmons knocked part of that wall in the early 1930s and built two houses, one at the corner (where the fish shop is today) and one behind it where Hartigans lived.